Craziest Action Heroes Of All Time

Hero Or Psycho? These 10 Guys Are Walking The Line

We all love our movie action heroes. They kick ass, take names, drive the coolest rides and spout off one-liners with a delightfully macho sense of fantasy. There’s an undeniable joy to watching someone like Arnie Schwarzenegger bump off a bad guy and crack wise (so much so that some an entire state even elected him as their political leader because he looked tough and quoted all the right catch phrases along the campaign trail). Yet, if you ever take the time to think about the implications of this type of brainless entertainment and the heroes it fosters, something a little disturbing emerges. After all, the typical action hero is actually mass murderer. We just don’t think of them that way because the dozens of people who were murdered on screen in 90 minutes were so clearly bad guys. I mean, they wore matching black uniforms and everything!

This week Liam Neeson’s instantly iconic ode to ass-kicking gets a third chapter in Taken 3. His character is a particularly amusing example of the action-hero-as-psychopath given that Neeson uses his “very particular set of skills” to kill piles of people in each movie with such cold brutality that he could easily be a movie monster like Freddy Krueger, Jason, or Michael Myers were it not for the fact that he has moral righteousness on his side. It makes for some damn fine entertainment with troubling afterthoughts for those willing to waste brainpower dissecting a dumb action movie.

With that in mind, we here at AskMen thought we’d take a look back at the top 10 most psychotic action movie heroes in movie history. It’s safe to say that you’ve got a little place in your heart for all of these cinematic heroes, the only question is whether or not the ultra-violent nutcases deserve it.